Here’s a fact that perfectly sums up the Trump for President campaign: His top economic advisor, and the only economist on his economic policy team, has never met or spoken with the candidate. Not once.
Peter Navarro, the advisor in question, is a professor of economics at UC Irvine, and he recently told the Orange County Register he had never actually met the Orange Menace. But he’s talked to him via phone, right? To that, Navarro said:
“I have never had the pleasure.”
But it’s really not a big deal, Navarro insisted:
“I am not the kind of person who needs to kiss the ring. I have great respect for (Trump) and I have worked with his team.”
If you’ve seen Navarro on cable news shows, then you know he’s a proponent of supply-side economics and trade policies which would lead to a global trade war and the loss of millions of American jobs. Dan Ikenson, trade policy director at the Cato Institute, says of Navarro:
“Of all the people I’ve debated on TV on trade, he’s the most strident, the most unyielding.”
Before Trump gave his speech last week in Detroit on his economic plan for the country should he be elected, family and campaign staff urged the GOP nominee to focus on policy details and clearly lay out a path for economic growth. But it was all for naught. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
“They’d like him to spend a little time each day–a half hour even–studying the issues he’ll need to understand if he becomes President. Is that so hard? Apparently so. Mr. Trump prefers to watch the cable shows rather than read a briefing paper.”
It’s no stretch to say that Donald Trump is the most intellectually uncurious and utterly clueless human being to ever seek the office of President. One of several million reasons he can never hold the most important elected office in the nation.
Featured Image Via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License
